Superwomen come in all varieties
Isabella bloody Beeton has a lot to answer for. The original domestic goddess was only 28 when she penned her 1112-page homage to housewifery, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Born in London in 1836, Isabella began writing cooking columns for one of her publisher husband’s titles, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. Not much of a cook herself, although apparently quite proficient at pastrymaking and plagiarism, she was an accomplished acquirer of recipes from unspecified sources.
Over two years from 1859-1861, she knocked out a series of monthly recipe supplements that were subsequently published as one terrific tome, just before her untimely death in 1865 from the complications of the birth of her fourth child.
Working mums: we’ve never had it easy.
Sometimes the stress of combining children, charity and work commitments is enough to drive a woman to drink and, in my case, to one particular drink: a generous nip, nay a glug straight from the bottle, of last season’s damson gin.
It has been a busy old week down on the farm. After 10 weeks of planting, pruning, pimping, pampering, painting, pottering, praying (to the weather gods), watering, weeding and wishing I still had another week up my sleeve before I opened our garden for this weekend’s annual Heroic Garden Festival, I must admit I’m starting to feel a bit heroic myself.
I don’t own a red bustier or starspangled bikini bottoms like Lynda Carter, but I can wrangle kids, run a raffle stall, sizzle sausages and bake dozens of scones (mix together 1 can of lemonade, a 300ml bottle of cream and 4 cups of self-raising flour, cut into a dozen big squares and bake at 200C for 12 minutes), all the while with one eye on the jam pot on our stove.
It’s always the way. You only ever get a bumper haul of homegrown fruit – of juicy pears, saucy apples or damson plums – when you have no free time to deal with it.
The week before I was due to give birth to my youngest son Lachlan – five years ago, almost to the day – I was overwhelmed with blackboy peaches. Mum came to the rescue, taking home a black plastic garbage bag full of fuzzy brown, blood-red fruit to bottle.
And this year? The damsons have ripened three weeks earlier than usual; Mum already has 10kg in her freezer and another 5kg in her fridge.
I have five damson trees in our chook run and their harvest can’t wait. The branches, laden with fruit, are hanging precariously over the hen house roof, within reach of nine feathered foragers and their porky companion. (Apple Sauce, our runaway kunekune, is in purgatory.)
Mrs Beeton was a damson disciple. She mentions them 63 times in her book. She wrote: ‘‘Whether for jam, jelly, pie, pudding, water, ice, wine, dried fruit or preserved, the damson, or damascene (for it was originally brought from Damascus, whence its name), is invaluable. It combines sugary and acid qualities in happy proportions, when fully ripe.
‘‘Amongst the list of the best sorts of baking plums, the damson stands first, not only on account of the abundance of its juice, but also on account of its soon softening. Because of the roughness of its flavour, it requires a large quantity of sugar.’’
Mrs Beeton’s sour purple plum repertoire included damson tart, damson cheese, damson compote and baked damsons preserved in stone jars with an airlock of melted mutton-suet, whereas my fallback position is tart damson jam for toast.
For every kilogram of fruit, add 750g sugar and boil hard. It’ll set like a rock. Scooping out the tiny stones, sadly, is a faffing nuisance, with as many as 90 fruit to the kilogram.
Far easier, and much less dentally deleterious, is to jam the raw fruit into large jars and drown in good quality gin. Prick as you pack, to speed up the infusion, and, after six months or more, strain and add sugar to taste. Homemade damson gin is reminiscent of almond liqueur, as the flavour of the stones is ever-so-slowly extracted.
I have dozens of damson recipes. Enough to fill a book, in fact, as my email inbox keeps reminding me. Ping: ‘‘When’s your damson book being published?’’ Ping: ‘‘Aren’t you writing a book about damsons?’’ Ping: ‘‘My damsons are ripe – I’m in desperate need of your recipes!’’
Ahem, mumble, murmur.
Yes, as if I’m not busy enough, I am still writing my book about damsons. And it’s not done yet. As I said, it’s enough to drive a woman to drink.
It's always the way. You only ever get a bumper haul of homegrown fruit - of juicy pears, saucy apples or damson plums - when you have no free time to deal with it.